


until you come to me

by lucifer



Category: Dead by Daylight (Video Game)
Genre: Blood, Bondage, Cheating, F/M, Kidnapping, Knifeplay, Manipulation, Slow Burn, Stalking, dead dove do not yeet, dubcon, enemies to even worse enemies, ghostface lore except it's 2013 instead of 1993, just fucked up shit, mutual disrespect, sociopath reader, the gaslighting olympics
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-02
Updated: 2021-02-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 01:33:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 16,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26767318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucifer/pseuds/lucifer
Summary: No, you don't find it strange that girls like you die first in every horror movie. Everything about you, head to toe, is crafted to scream vapid, narcissistic void. But the virgin-whore dichotomy is old news. The next big thing is stalking the guy from work that's been stalking you.
Relationships: Danny "Jed Olsen" Johnson | The Ghost Face/Original Female Character(s), Danny "Jed Olsen" Johnson | The Ghost Face/Reader, Danny "Jed Olsen" Johnson | The Ghost Face/You
Comments: 45
Kudos: 154





	1. pumpkin spice and everything nice

**Author's Note:**

> this is a pre-entity ghostface lore fic. but instead of 1993 it's 2013. 
> 
> this fic takes place the year after electra heart came out, the album that invented hating men, using men, and being emotionally unavailable. this is the year we heard do i wanna know? by arctic monkeys for the first time. this is the post-jennifer's body era. if you've ever wanted to be a bitch making terrible decisions without regard for anything, this one goes out to you babes
> 
> this is dedicated to my dear friend @whore_or, nothing could exist here without them

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “It was very cool seeing you last night, Instagirl.” You look up from about 900 stock pictures of pumpkins and the resident film critic is sitting on your desk in the corner, tossing a rubber band ball up and down.

The day starts with hissing. The cat is mad at you again. You roll over blearily and on the other side of the bed you hear Matthew’s feet touch the floor. He groans, says, “I’m gonna shower,” then the bathroom door clicks shut behind his silhouette.

As the water rattles the shitty pipes in the wall you crack an eyelid and lock eyes with Furby, who stopped hissing but has yet to stop making that closed mouth, beginning note of a yowl sound that cats always do when they see you. 

You get up, check the time, you’re 16 minutes late for class. You put on yesterday's clothes carefully, pluck stray cat hairs off the sleek black sweater, and put on your shoes, glancing at Facebook on your phone. Then you sigh and finally start stomping around. 

“Matthew! I’m late for class!” You’re calling towards the bathroom door, light pouring out in a strip below it, grabbing your purse. “I’ll see you later!” You shout again, shaking up the crumpled bedsheets. Or—blanket. Matthew is one of those guys that has only one sweaty throw blanket and no top sheet. The cat hisses and jumps off the side table to avoid the movements as Matthew’s voice echoes back, “Okay, see you!”

You open the front door a crack and look at Furby. The cat looks at you. In eight months you’ll be done with your final semester at Florida University and leaving the state. You open the door all the way, then rush towards the cat to scare it. It bolts—straight out the entry, down the walk-up, and disappears around a fence.

“Oh no,” you say out loud. Then you shut the door behind you and walk to campus. 

So you're not a good person. You’re twenty seven years old and getting a masters degree in English. You have forty thousand followers on Instagram. You claim your skincare routine is over a dozen products long when you remember it, but you mostly fall asleep in your makeup six days a week. Every morning, you do yoga at the studio off Campus Drive and stop by a local donut shop for coffee because it’s important to have exercise be part of a daily routine. Except on mornings after you stay at Matthew’s. There are a lot of those. 

Twice a week you have class at noon. Your thesis is going to be about Russian literature or some shit. 

From there you head in to work, where you’re interning as a food writer for the local paper—not to be confused with the _other_ local paper, which is a conservative rag that mainly deals with convincing the local retired population to play more golf to... protect their right to bear arms. No, you’re working at the Gazette, with a trendy mural, color blocked bean bags, and wheeled desks, in a building that maybe used to be a warehouse but more recently was being used for illegal boxing. 

The Gazette is popular on campus for obvious liberal reasons. It doesn't really make a difference because both local papers are owned by the same rich American flag waving idiot. You’re the only intern there that already has an undergraduate degree, but you’re also the only intern with a column that people actually read on the website. The only other one they read is the movie reviews, and that guy contributes to the paper basically full time. 

You also fucking hate his pretentious ass writing and by proxy him. He seems fine in the office setting and you never work with him directly. Sometimes you even chat and laugh at his jokes during the meetings. But day one, when you read his hyperbolic and scathing review of Twilight: Breaking Dawn Part 2—in which he managed to reference Tarkovsky, not once, but TWICE—you’ve managed to be soooooo busy every time the publishing team invites you out to a bar crawl. Mostly because it's just 10 guys drinking every IPA they can get their hands on. But also because he attends every. Single. One. 

It’s not bad though. You get paid minimum wage for the internship. You sell scam weight loss teas on Instagram for sponsorship cash and have like, a hundred affiliate links paying your rent for a wide-windowed studio apartment with wooden countertops. You have at least a dozen yoga pants you received for free from various brands. But in eight months, you’re going to be moving on, and there are so many interesting things left to do.

Letting Furby out almost immediately becomes more of a pain than a fun, cruel joke. Matthew is naturally distraught that the cat is lost. As you leave class he locks you into a wet, teary phone call. You could care less if Furby gets eaten by an alligator. 

“No, I don’t remember seeing him get past my legs,” you’re saying, walking to the parking lot. “I was in such a hurry though, I’m sorry, I was so late for class—the professor even made me sit in the front row. It sucked.” 

The first plan is to break up with Matthew as slowly and painfully as possible. He has no idea you plan to move to New York or whatever. You’ve been with Matthew for a year. He likes that you post pictures with him on your Instagram, adding captions about how lucky you are that he made you breakfast that one singular time. He _really_ likes that you deleted all the pictures with your exes when you started your relationship because it felt "clean". And he hates it when you stop talking to him for days on end and start posting pictures showing off your butt in the sponsored yoga pants. 

You like almost nothing about him except that he's easy to be with and fun to avoid. Twice he's convinced a friend to follow you around and make sure you're not cheating. You’re always just in your apartment, fucking around online and watching every season of some awful sitcom. 

So he's possessive but stupid, a perfect combination. Sometimes he buys you designer bags made by people whose names you forget until you need to tag them in your photos. 

You _thought_ you liked watching Matthew cry until you realized he usually does it in a horrible attempt to guilt you and get what he wants. You used to be really good at pulling that off with previous boyfriends. They always say with new relationships, new challenges, but this one is pretty stale. All signs point to: he's been thinking about proposing, so the break up is gonna really be something, possibly the _most_ interesting thing about you being together at all. You’re hoping the timing works out so you can be a fiancé for like a month before maybe crashing his car and disappearing with the ring. 

In the short walk from your own car to the entrance of the warehouse turned publishing space, Floridan humidity wraps itself around you and squeezes. The hot autumn sun is relentless. Today you’re working on an extensive write up about Big Pumpkin Spice being back and the new bastardizations of it that local chains are stocking. 

When you get into work the guys are talking about some murders that happened just a few miles out of town in the swamps. They’re always talking about the goddamn swamps. 

You go to the bathroom and change from fitness wear into a work appropriate linen button up, then shove sweaty clothes into the fancy thumbprint activated locker in the break room. You’re one of two women in this dozen man workplace. So, like clockwork, the guy who does the weather section invites you out for their weekly bar hopping to try and prevent it from becoming the typical boy’s Friday night out. You actually have something going on this evening, but you pretend to hesitate before making a weak excuse as usual. 

The event you’re attending is a launch party for a Beauty Instagrammer’s first makeup line. The theme is grunge—so you dress up like Alicia Silverstone in Clueless when she gets mugged but with fishnets and white faux fur, opting for messy, 90s Courtney Love hair. What’s her name’s new palette is.... crusty. 

Inside the club, entirely rented for the event, the starring 1 Million Follower Beauty Guru takes a selfie with you that goes straight to her profile, your tag included. You hadn’t planned to post any photos until tomorrow when they could get run through VSCO and properly edited but now you need something for people to see in the next 24 hours when they visit your profile to gawk. You’re pissed and also exhilarated, giddily checking your phone—you are absolutely one step behind shitfaced but you’re also one step past making anything other than a glaze-eyed drunk face for the photo you need to take. Right fucking now. The notifs are already rolling in. 

You figure some drag queen is smoking behind the club that could take an amazing picture of you in front of the garbage illuminated by the neighboring neon bar sign—dark enough but also dramatic enough. So of course when you step outside, the only person there is a hoodied man smoking outside the backdoor of the dingy dive bar across the alley. Not the vibe of your sparkling launch party at all. There’s beats of classic rock punching out of their open back door. 

It’s unusually cold and your skin erupts into gooseflesh quickly—you pull the faux fur mini jacket closer to cover your red dress a bit more. A pause to look at your phone idly, hesitating in hopes someone from your party comes outside. No one does. It’s time to see how weird the weirdo is—he also hasn’t looked up from his phone at your appearance. 

“He—y,” you call out, laying on the drunken tone a bit, stepping forward, and when the guy’s head snaps up to reveal his face under the hood, you realize it’s not a guy at all. 

It’s that dickhead that writes the movie reviews. 

“—ah, fuck,” you exhale flatly just as immediately as he grins wide. 

“Is that who I think it is? Foodie girl? The princess of kale and quinoa?” He does a snarky little look up and down the alley as if pretending he’s searching for someone else. He pushes off the wall—steps forward in a way that can only be described as a disgusting saunter, so you give him a friendly grimace and think about slamming a car door closed on those legs. 

"Hey, Olsen."

“What a coincidence! Honestly, thought we were never going to catch you out at the bar with us. Though, I guess the alleyway behind the bar doesn’t count, huh? They’re just inside by the way if you want to say hi. Wait, so your plans tonight were to just go party with other people? Weather Boy said you were studying. Seems a liiittle rude to lie if you ask me—“ 

You beam at him and interject, “—I didn’t! That’s sooo funny though.” Being cold and drunk makes you want this interaction to be over with as soon as possible. You really didn’t want to fucking see this guy and you already knew he talks a lot. You're not in the mood to be cute, so of _course_ he’s way chattier with you alone than polite group talk in the open office. 

He pauses quizzically, either drunk and slow or surprised by your relatively rude interjection, but continues to smile lopsided anyway. “Well, you can just not want to hang with the guys. I get that too—most of them have no idea how to talk to you.”

You’ve stopped listening. The suffocating feeling of entertaining a man much more interested in you than you them is making a sharp single note pierce your eardrums from inside your brain, even through the seven drink haze. “Uh-huh. Can I get a favor from you please?”

“Yeah, sure. Wanna cigarette?” 

Of course you do. You take a cigarette. 

“Light too, princess?” 

“Mmhmm,” you nod with your lips already pursed around the filter. 

He rifles through a couple of pockets before finding the lighter. It clicks as you inhale the smoke. The bass booms behind you as some new dubstep-EDM variant of a top 100 song rumbles through the brick walls. The worst happens—he starts talking again.

“It sounds crazy in there. How long have you guys been at it? Since like, seven right? We don’t normally go to this bar but I wanted to check it out. Pretty funny that it turned out to be some internet famous thing next door.” He's clearly trying to chat you up. Normally you’d indulge this with an affirmative giggle, but he's annoying. 

“Yeah, haha. Can you do me that favor now?” 

He shifts his weight and pushes hair out of his face under the hoodie. Adding onto the reasons why you hate him, you've noticed that at the beginning of shifts his hair is loosely slicked back by—what, pure unshowered grease? Maybe wax or gel, but you’re not optimistic about it. Yet by every workday's end it's a mess and falling around his cheeks, disrupted by those fidgety fingers. And here he is, fiddling with the unsalvageable fucking hair again. “Sure, is this for your Instagram? Because I gotta warn you, these photography skills aren’t cheap. I have a day rate of five hundred dollars, cash only—“

“Yeah,” you thrust your phone hand towards him, knuckles bumping his arm. “It is, can you get a shot of me under the sign? Just try to keep it in focus.” 

“I mean, it would be way better if I had my camera,” he laments while taking the phone from you. “Especially when this lighting is so cool.” 

“No worries,” you drag deeply on the cigarette, trying to finish it as fast as possible. “It’s just for the ‘gram.” 

“Yeah, but just imagine if we could do a long exposure, like, wow. Instant masterpiece.”

You're ignoring him and marching to the position you want under the lights, the smell of damp trash and piss wafting up a little. You let the jacket slip off your shoulders and bunch around your elbows and you angle your jaw, clawed nails cradling the cigarette to your lips. You give him a pointed look.

He crouches down immediately and holds the phone up, finally not beating around the bush. 

“I guess it looks preeeetty great already. Like, your skin really glows. Let me get the angle—oh, shit. I locked it.”

...Or so you thought.

You march back over, heels clacking, blood boiling, and unlock the phone. 

The exact second you return to your place he says, “I did it again. Is that not the button to take the photo?” 

You force a laugh, a little hysterical. This moron eating your time, intentionally or just via pure stupidity, is putting you on the edge of something. “Oh my god, are you _drunk_ drunk?” 

“Aw come on, I’m used to using a real camera. And I have an Android.” This time he comes to you, not at all abashed. You unlock the phone, cradling it close to hide the screen. You wonder if he's looking down your dress. You've only ever seen each other in business casual workplace wear, which you are absolutely not wearing. 

Noticing all the notifications you’re missing for a brief second is an itch on top of an itch. You hand the phone back to him.

But the third time’s the real charmer. He spends an excessive amount of seconds claiming he can’t find the exact spot he was at. By the time he’s crouched back down to hit the good angle, the phone is timed out and has locked itself. You're dead certain you're being fucked with but try not to actually swear at him.

"Uh-oh," he says, obviously trying not to laugh. 

“Dude, I’m going to need another cigarette for this,” you complain. 

“I know, I know. Look, I promise I won’t peek at anything—can you just tell me your passcode?” 

Something clicks in your brain like a gun cocking as soon as he says it—a sort of nagging awareness, breaking the haze of drunken impatience. You hear yourself tell him the numbers immediately. Huh. 

“Thanks, doll.” 

He takes the picture then starts doing something that is clearly not taking pictures, maybe swiping through them to look at the rest of your camera roll? “Are you done? I wanna see.” You’re pulling the jacket up over your cold ass arms, half ready to snatch the phone back but also—your curiosity is piqued by his boldness. Is he swiping fast enough to get to the nudes? Let's not find out. “Oh my God, give it back,” you complain sharply to get his attention, an unbearable whiny edge to your voice. “Stop going through my stuff!”

He glances up at you through his hair then stands quickly, offering the phone back, cracking a grin. 

“Yeah, they came out good.”

They did come out good. In fact, they are fire. 

  
  


Later that night or earlier that next morning, whatever, just as you’re about to go through your apartment building’s front gate, heels in hand, you get a text message from a number you don’t know. 

_You get home safe?_ It reads. You know immediately.

_Wow, you texted yourself my number? Way uncool dude. I’m fine_

He responds, _Haha good just making sure_

Then,

_nite princess_

You drag your glitter covered dried-sweat body into bed and squint at your phone a bit longer. Something jogs your memory while watching the photo he took racking up the hearts. In the angle it’s taken, your legs stretch on, skin blue and red. Your expression is bitchy, irritated by how long it took to get the phone working. It’s a hot picture. 

You tab back to your messages. His are blue and say “sent from iPhone”. 

_you said you had an android_ , you send him. The bubble indicating he’s typing pops up and disappears twice. 

_you caught me oops_

_this is so embarrassing. I was just really drunk and kept pushing the button_ 😜

So he’s a liar. 

  
  


Matthew is crying again when you go see him before yoga the next morning. Furby still isn’t found. You sympathetically let him know you have a huge test to study for the next two weeks and that you hope the cat comes home (or at least he finds a body). 

  
  


“It was very cool seeing you last night, Instagirl.” You look up from about 900 stock pictures of pumpkins and the resident film critic is sitting on your desk in the corner, tossing a rubber band ball up and down. 

You lean back in your bouncy ergonomic chair and smile tightly at him, lips closed. “You too, Olsen.” 

“Now let’s discuss payment.” 

Your fake smile drops. “Excuse me?”

“For the photos,” he says helpfully. “I told you my day rate was expensive. Now, I’m willing to cut you a deal since you know, coworkers and all...”

“I’m sorry,” you push yourself away from the desk and cross your arms, smirking incredulous. “Are you like a professional photographer or something?” 

He tilts his head like he missed a joke. “Uh, yes? Way more so than you.” 

_Alright, bitch._ “So you do like, weddings? Prom photos?” 

“Are you serious? I resent the implication that wedding photogs aren’t really professionals by the way. That’s pretty disrespectful, it’s a very legit specialization... and look. We’ve worked together here for like half a year and you have no idea what I do?” 

“I do." Your tone is flat, color starting to creep up your chest to your face. You do not, in fact, know what he actually does. You’ve only ever read his dumbass piece about Twilight when you got hired. “You jack off to the Criterion Collection weekly on page 29.” 

He makes a strangled little noise. This time he sounds genuinely insulted. “Hello? Yes I do some film reviews on the side. But you haven’t seen my magnificent and thorough coverage of the recent Roseville murders? Visual and written?” He makes a little camera clicking gesture with his hands.

You're on the defensive now. “Um, I don’t live in Roseville so I can’t say I’ve taken the time to care. I just _work_ here.” 

Now he's laughing lowly in disbelief. No longer broadcasting your conversation to the rest of the loud printers and clacking keyboards around the room, he leans towards you quietly, privately delighted: “I swore I saw the glimpse of a brain in there last night. But are you really this dumb?”

This grinds your gears like _crazy_. You lean in in return, flush turned seething. “No, but I guess this might have something to do with the fact that I have just never given a shit about what your job is,” you whisper hotly. Oh no, you’re not very cute right now. "Meanwhile, you're clearly obsessed with me." 

“Relax, princess, I’m just a coworker with the decency to keep up with your work. Writing about the latest cereal covered donut from a hip new cafe downtown? Selling another gold-leaf overhyped plate of mediocre pasta to your adoring followers?” He lists your previous articles, sardonic and a little venomous in a way you're immediately ready to use against him. He must really hate your pieces. At least the feeling is mutual and you only needed to suffer through one of his own. 

“You’re forgetting something,” you smile widely, giggle sharply. “I’m about to publish _the_ definitive listicle of where to get pumpkin spice everything this fall.” 

“Well, at least one of us will change popular media forever.” His tone is light but his expression twists in distaste at the end there, the ghost of a scar on his upper lip stretching slightly. You want to start reading this vapid pumpkin spice draft to him or bring up truffle hot sauces, anything to keep that pained look on his face forever, but he keeps talking while you're fixated on it and it smooths away. “Anyway, how about this." He’s moving on but somehow you catch a trace of that look on his finger, attached by sinew and bone to tightly crossed arms as it taps, taps, taps the rubber band ball. White knuckles. Holy fuck, this guy hates pumpkin spice.

"We can call it even by bringing me along to whatever fancy modern gastropub is your next assignment. Company-paid dinner and drinks. I’ll even take a nice photo for your—" he does an ugly little baby voice here—" _Instagram_ of it. Sound good?”

You saw this attempt at bargaining for a date from a mile away. But honestly, it's a pretty good deal, because you love when someone offers to take your pictures. But you still hate him. And despite his request appearing like a date in theory, it doesn't seem like he particularly likes you either. 

“Don’t tell me,” you say, suspicious, “You’re one of those guys that can’t get a girlfriend your age so you pick up college girls?”

“First of all, graduate students aren't real college students. What are you? An adult pretending to be a teen girl?”

You glower at him. 

“Second of all, I'm wounded you would consider me 'old'. I'm a millennial too, you know. But third—do you _want_ me to be a weirdo? I guess there are a lot of films about college girls being easy. A couple of free drinks for some pretty ones and they’re ready to fuck any scumbag, even like, philosophy majors, no? Those really put the sordid in sorority.”

God, he said the f word. _Films_. You grimace as he continues. 

“In reality I would never assume that stereotype to be remotely true, by the way.” There’s a pause and you realize he’s looking over you, your body rudely, slowly, eyes lingering. This has absolutely crossed a line. “But I bet for you, it was.”

That hits you like a metric ton of bricks to the ass. You force yourself to ignore it while blood pounds in your ears, making your own voice sound distant. “Were _you_ a philosophy major that never got girls in real life?” 

He laughs, not letting you deflect. “Not denying it? I guess you did get around, nice." Your jaw snaps open to bite out a response but he's already continuing. "Nah, I wasn't a philosophy major.” 

You shut your mouth and grind your teeth. "Then what were you?" _A shitty drug dealer, probably,_ your overheating brain sings, keyed up. _A tiny dicked loser. A fucked up idiot._

"A guy that gets girls. So are we on for the date?" 

You want to pour a scalding pumpkin spice latte in his eyes. You want to scream. But you say, "Sure," because this needs to end before every other man in the office knows how blotchy you look when you're angry. You’ve already shared that with the worst possible one. 

“Great!” 

You calm yourself thinking about ways to 'accidentally' hurt him later. 

“Yeah, great. Whatever. Fine. Just go away, I need to finish this."

You can hear him laughing under his breath as he goes back to his desk. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> reader: so you're obsessed with me?  
> danny: no i'm not *immediately lists 10 things that you've done recently*
> 
> 1) i'm trying really hard to live, breathe 2013 but i'm aware some shit might be wrong. originally this fic featured instagram stories but those didn't exist until 2016--this takes place when snapchat was king and timelines were chronological. damn.  
> 2) i hate petty cruelty toward animals. i'm aware it's fairly typical sociopathic behavior so we're just gonna flirt with it. furby is totally fine and we love him for recognizing our reader for the hellish nightmare that she is  
> 3) i'm fairly certain "florida university" does not exist, because the thought of a school named FU is too tantalizing for america to handle  
> 4) i also don't know anything about florida except what floridans tell me, and those tales are usually told in tongues. i'm just doing my best to translate here  
> 5) thank you for reading


	2. totally vulnerable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Do you do shit like develop your own film?" you ask him out of the blue as he settles in. 
> 
> “Been thinking about my incredible photography skills, huh? Of course I do." 
> 
> "Of course you do." You roll the window down all the way as he turns the ignition and let the cooler evening air hit your face. Your hand is limp, resting just outside the edge of the glass, and you tap, tap, tap the car door thoughtfully.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> every day i open up my silly little document and write my silly little horny slasher fic 
> 
> thanks for all the sweet comments, i'm overwhelmed and i open them every time i feel like i'm getting nowhere writing this. glad this reader is vibing. i just wasn't really sure if this character would be enjoyable in the second person POV when it feels like piloting a plane that's crash landing in horny town airport. 
> 
> here's another chapter of flirting with danger, being in a relatively stable headspace, and not getting fucked. i have many regrets and all of them are making this a slow burn

In a few days the pumpkin spice listicle is done and it's a fucking work of art. You have everything: Tweets about Starbucks from students on campus. Relatable memes jacked from Tumblr. A genuinely valuable list and review of everything from pumpkin spiced vodka (disgusting) to pumpkin spice lube (somehow tastes better than the vodka, plus hilarious). There's multiple boxes of various pumpkin spice shit in your car and you’ve tried every single item. As you preview the final draft of the webpage, you know with certainty that this feat of modern journalism would make a Buzzfeed employee's dick hard. 

Which is why when you look up and see Jed fucking Olsen twiddling his thumbs and staring at you from the other side of the slowly emptying shared workspace, you feel like you just did the ice bucket challenge. 

Earlier as you confirmed your final submission of the article with an editor, he actually saw you get handed your next assignment. Perks of an open office, you guess. It's a new hotel restaurant bar that, unfortunately, looks exactly like your kind of place. It's hip, happening, has outdoor seating accented with some of those propane powered fire tables, and the knowledge that you will have to go there with the world's worst person haunts you. He must have known this was coming, you always get handed the bar assignments because you're the only food writer of legal drinking age—the rest are undergrad interns. While looking over the details and Google maps printouts you lock eyes with him across the folder by accident. 

He smirks, dipping his head down to send you a text that vibrates in your palm seconds later. It just says: _Tonight???_

You sigh, rolling your eyes, walking right by him and sitting down back at your desk in the corner of the room. Might as well get it over with.

_going home and changing first_

When you glance up from sending the message he’s grinning like a schoolboy at the screen and typing full speed, tapping a foot. _Oh babe it's so sweet of you to get all dressed up for me!!!_

You’re glaring at your phone now. _It’s for the Instagram pics, moron_

You wouldn’t be caught dead wearing your work clothes in an Instagram photo. 

"No, I've just got a work dinner tonight," you're telling Matthew over the phone, grabbing a knife from the block to slice open some limes. "It's a new place. I'll take you there when I'm free if it's good." The sun has set, your clothes are all laid out on the bed, hair curler heating up in the bathroom. "Wait, UTO's hosting the Halloween party this year? But they have like, the smallest house. Ugh. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Miss you too. Love. Bye." 

After changing and curling your hair, you resolve to just get as shitfaced as possible and try to have a good night. A preliminary Google search reveals that the bar has some mean drinks worth trying and also some legal variation of absinthe. Part of you thinks it still won’t be strong enough for this experience. 

So you pregame with a shot of tequila and a slice of lime in your apartment's tiny kitchen and text the fucker your address. No way are you driving yourself. He must live close because he’s knocking less than ten minutes later without even responding to the text. 

You pull open the door with one hand and are immediately met with the overwhelming scent of something horrible.

“Are you wearing _Axe body spray_?” 

“You like?” he’s leaning on the doorway with a cocked elbow, waggles his eyebrows. 

Now you're holding your nose. “Fuck no. Absolutely not. Wash that shit off right now,” you grab the sleeve of his jacket—fortunately he opted for leather over the hoodie this time instead of the god awful H&M blazer he usually dons to barely meet the business casual workplace rules—then drag him towards the bathroom doorway around the corner of your bed. 

“Aww, but I thought you’d like if I dressed up a little! Nice place you got, here, by the way—” He's cut off as you close the door between you, with him in the bathroom on the other side.

A second later you hear the water in the sink turn on so you stomp back to the kitchen and take another shot for good measure, licking salt from the back of your hand and sucking on another slice of lime. When he emerges he's gingerly holding your towel and his face and half his hair is dripping wet, sleeves rolled up. You look him up and down and reach for the tequila bottle again. 

"Can I use this on my face?" he says. 

"What?" 

"Like, is this a hand towel?" he says. You think about this for a second. You live alone so you've never had a hand-only towel out in the bathroom. It's definitely a shower towel. An ass, crotch and feet drying situation. Obviously clean, but a personal item. “I’m just trying to be polite,” he adds while you’re hesitating.

"No, it’s not,” you say, voice flat. “Just hurry up and stop dripping on my hardwood floor." You reach for the paper towel roll to offer it, but—his eyes light up, one eyebrow twitching upwards in what should be mischief but you interpret as something more like pure evil. He presses the towel close to his face and just... inhales deeply for a horrifying second before throwing it over his head and thoroughly drying his disgusting hair. You choke, the dredges of lime and alcohol burning your throat, ears heating up a bit. The smell of Axe isn't even completely gone and now it's going to be embedded in your shit. 

"Are you serious?!" 

He just laughs and tosses the towel rudely over the back of your velvet couch. You're gonna have to burn the whole thing now. You're going to have to burn him too. 

"Get your heels on, princess. We wouldn't want to let the night get away, would we?"

His car isn't a total piece of shit. It at least has an aux cord and takes CDs instead of cassettes. The alcohol is pleasantly working its way through your system as you lean on the car doorframe, window partially down, the breeze feeling amazing, and you're about to drink, eat, and get photographed for free. He’s playing music that isn’t awful or too old for you to give a shit about, it's like, The Smiths or something. You're optimistic and it is at least partially on account of you being very buzzed. 

"You mind if I grab some waters and snacks?" he asks, already pulling over to an empty parking spot a few yards away from the entrance of a dingy but busy 7-11 at a crowded intersection. “We’re gonna want them later."

Snacks. Maybe he’s not the worst. “Sure. I want a Coke and the biggest bag of salt and vinegar chips.” 

"Dope, be right back." He hops out of the car and leaves you in it with the keys in the ignition. Your eyes follow him as he strolls past the automatic doors into the fluorescent lights. 

The second he goes out of your line of sight, you start snooping around in his shit, looking for any possible dirt that can be found. You open the glove compartment first. On top is a huge map book with multiple red x-marked annotations, jammed in and wrinkled to fit so the compartment can even close. You drag the thing out and rummage around for more interesting stuff. It’s mostly littered with receipts, a couple of moleskines stuffed with other papers, pictures, and newspaper clippings presumably for work, but something weird and white catches your eye, shoved into a corner. 

You turn the object over—but it's just some beat up old Halloween mask. Of course his choice of costume is something overdone and lazy. You stare distastefully at its screaming, scuffed face for a moment, then jam it back into the corner and keep digging. Your own costume is likely going to be a French maid with cat ears or some other awful sexy abomination, so maybe you aren't in a position to judge. You do anyway.

You open one moleskine and like a dozen candid photos of someone eating dinner alone fall out, along with a list of addresses, some crossed off. You curse and pick up the pictures. It's pretty weird but it tracks that he's the type to opt for old school journalism bullshit where everything is notes on leads, film negatives, tape recorders with actual tape, and other pretentious garbage. If you didn't already see him typing on a laptop at work almost daily you would assume he uses a typewriter. 

Further digging uncovers a spilled bottle of Advil, a bunch of loose change, three broken ballpoint pens glued to the plastic by their own dried ink, a pair of black leather gloves and a couple of loose scratched CDs. One is a mixtape entitled in red Sharpie, "sexy murder music" with honest to God stickers of hearts surrounding it, so you just sigh, shove the map book back in to cover the mess, and marvel at what bad taste he has. You were hoping to find something like a second phone, hundreds of stolen credit cards, or at _least_ a brick of cocaine. Rifling through the compartment in the seat divider yields more loose change, half a dozen crushed empty cigarette packs, some duct tape, and a can of Axe Body spray. No illegal substances or pharmaceuticals, no weapons, not even the typical dusty french fries or food garbage a man could have in his car. There's even a box of bleach wipes under your seat and a bottle of spray cleaner. You're _this_ close to describing him as a "relatively clean person" and that disgusts you almost more than if you had found half eaten food and used condoms. 

You think for a moment, brain a little too hazy to be doing this with good judgement, then open the glove compartment again and open the softly worn, leather-bound notebook you'd been looking at once more. You inspect the photos—they kind of look like they were taken through a window? Oh God, does he think he's a detective too? Is he trying to solve _crimes_? Does he do illegal surveillance shit for the sake of "the story"? You wouldn't be surprised.

You flip past the addresses and uncover a section that looks like notes. 

_\--takes out trash wednesday nights after work shift. back door is captured on security camera. blind spot under window to right of back door. knives in block beside sink--_

Through the cracked windows and over the din of crickets and frogs, you hear the automatic doors of the convenience store open and close with the telltale beeping song of the motion sensor. You scramble to shove the book back into the glove compartment under the maps, struggle for a second to jam the whole thing closed, and go back to looking at your phone. 

Moments later he slides into the driver's seat and throws you a bottle of Coke and Fiji water, tossing multiple crinkled bags of chips into the back seat. 

"Do you do shit like develop your own film?" you ask him out of the blue as he settles in. 

“Been thinking about my incredible photography skills, huh? Of course I do." 

"Of course you do." You roll the window down all the way as he turns the ignition and let the cooler evening air hit your face. Your hand is limp, resting just outside the edge of the glass, and you tap, tap, tap the car door thoughtfully. 

The hotel-restaurant-bar is trendy and crowded to hell. The staff knew you would be coming but the whole thing to make it a fair review is to surprise them with the "when". Luckily this place is the kind where they try a bit more when they know they’re getting written about, even if it’s just for the local paper. The feeling of being treated a little extra well, seated immediately, and offered complimentary shit before the people who may have been waiting outside for over an hour? There's nothing like it. It puts you in a really good mood. When you get seated at a high table near the bar, say goodbye to the host with a smile, your unfortunate partner for the evening shakes his head.

"God, you eat this shit up, don't you? They never should have given you this job." 

You lean forward conspiratorially through the din of people and music. Not even the man before you can ruin this. "It's a bar review, Olsen. I fully intend to eat up as much shit as possible." You put one finger on your cheek, cock your head as if thinking, cute. "And most importantly, drink as much as possible." 

Before he can snark back the waiter appears, takes your first round of orders and recommends about twenty different specials. You order three different drinks at once and one cajun style poutine, whatever that's supposed to be. He gets a single drink, leans in with elbows on the table as soon as the waiter leaves. 

"Now it's time for the worst part about dates. Tell me about yourself, doll." 

You shrug, sip your complimentary sparkling water. "What do you want to know? It would be easier if you just skimmed my Instagram. You're supposed to do that before the date, though."

"Nuh-uh, want to hear it from you. Where are you from? What's your family like? What's your favorite color? What's your favorite horror movie?" 

"I don't know, pink. And... Paranormal Activity?" He makes a face but you just keep talking. "I'm from Miami, I have a sister. Fam is still in Miami."

"You keep in touch with them?" 

You rest your chin on your hand, already bored with this line of questioning, playing with the condensation on the water glass absently. 

"Rarely. I'm the older sibling so I just let my sister do all the talking and attention hogging. They don't worry about me. She keeps them busy."

"Hmm, interesting. Now, _why_ Paranormal Activity—" 

You burst out laughing, cover your mouth with one hand. "I knew you weren't going to let that slide. God, what is it with you and movies?"

He puts a hand to his heart, dramatic. "I'm simply passionate about the arts. Have you even seen the classics? Psycho? Nightmare on Elm Street?" 

"I liked Misery," you shrug, and the drinks are arriving, thank god they're arriving. You offer the waiter a smile and immediately skip the tiny black straw to opt for cold deep gulps of whatever the hell this fruity concoction is, exhaling with satisfaction after. "God, I mean yeah, I like those movies. I do like movies. I just don't mind falling asleep to them instead of getting off to them, unlike you. I also hate having this kind of conversation anytime someone wants to talk about _films_. Surprise if I haven't seen something, like I'm out of the loop. Disdain if I have seen something apparently bad and enjoyed it. Long explanations, useless trivia meant to impress me. If you want to watch something, we can just watch it, I don't need a pitch or summary about how important it is to some pop subculture that no one cares about." 

"Wow," he says. "What is it with _you_ and movies?" 

You glare at him. In part, it’s your fixation with that horrible review of his from months ago, the nail in the coffin of your tolerance for many annoying conversations with exes. But there’s no way you’re letting him know that. You finish your drink, pull out your phone, pause.

"What exactly did I just finish?" you ask, tabbing over to the notepad app to write down your work notes. 

"No clue."

"Great. Guess I'll just have to get another." 

"Seconds? I can't believe I let myself get stuck driving here." He looks at his single drink forlornly.

"Don't worry," you say, sipping out of one of the other glasses and then making a face. It just tastes like... what, a slightly-nicer-than-Jack Daniels whiskey? With a single spherical ice cube and a candied piece of orange peel on a toothpick? No thanks. "If I get enough of these in me, maybe I'll even agree to watch your favorite movie. Whatever that is." 

"Oooh, so generous," he says, raises his glass in a mock cheers. "I'm definitely holding you to that. But now it's your turn. What awkward first date questions do you want to ask me now?" 

You look at him over the rim of your glass, surprised. You haven't really thought of asking him anything at all. But it would be weird not to. "You from around here?" 

"Nope, I move a lot. Philly, Utah—" 

"Ugh, there's a list? Nevermind." 

"Wow. Sorry I haven't lived in the simple, moist state of Florida my whole life. Guess you don't want to hear a very flattering and embellished version of my life story either?" 

"No way. And there's no way I could live here my whole life either. I'll be leaving when I graduate in spring." 

He tilts his head at this. "Really? Interesting. Where to?" 

You shrug noncommittally, put your chin on the palm of your hand. "No clue." 

"Huh. I'm also going to look for new work next year," he muses. 

"You're telling me... the renowned Roseville Gazette, serving a population of less than fifty thousand, doesn't pay you enough? Tragic."

"It's not the money, but you're right, they are cheap bastards. I guess you could say I'm not really the type to stay in one place for long."

"Hmmm," you say. You think about the maps, notebooks, and photos absently. "Don't care. Let's drink." 

  
Two more orders and one company card paying off the check later, you still don't remember to jot down half the names of these drinks for your write-up. The other cocktails you sip once and don't touch after. He finishes one or two—"Waste not, want not, you know? Unless we get wasted by my drunk driving, I guess. Maybe I should stop drinking." They're dry martini or middle shelf whiskey concoctions. The truth is you don't know shit about alcohol, you just like shots or dangerously over sweetened drinks that will kick your ass, and you recognize this place is classier than hiding the taste of alcohol behind grenadine, soda, or Red Bulls. Here, you're supposed to actually enjoy the flavor of the barrel it rotted in or something. So of course you're going to give it a stellar review and just be confused in secret. 

The food is fine and is keeping you from reaching the puking point. Cajun poutine just meant French fries with gumbo and cheese curds on top. The absinthe was kind of fun but propelled you to a level of conversational stupidity that has him laughing more and more as you complain about how he should have taken pictures earlier because dammit, all the muscles in your face are too relaxed now. You don't really give a shit about the review at this point. 

You have your compact out, poking at the oils on your face in preparation for the promised photo. He brought his actual camera this time, the bulky DSLR. 

"Photoshop out my pores, okay? I want you to just fucking... obliterate them," you're saying, adjusting your boobs in the dress. He makes a disgusted face while unsubtly staring at your boobs, which is somehow twice as insulting. 

"Fuck no. It will look fine, don't worry about it. You seemed to be preeetty happy with the last pictures, and that was on your phone. Just saying." 

"Yeah, yeah, I'm the one who picked good lighting. Alright, I'm ready," you say, throwing your hair over one shoulder and arranging it. You look through your lashes at the lens and he starts clicking away. After what feels like a million years of striking different poses amongst the surrounding clinking glasses and raucous conversation, clutching the prettiest drinks you didn’t finish, without any input or commentary from him, you halt the modeling process to glare. The shutter snaps again one last time. "Are we good?" 

"Oh yeah, just seeing how long you'd keep making those faces for. That pout's going in the personal collection though," he pulls back and starts flipping through them on the screen. 

You roll your eyes and put a hand out, wiggling your fingers. "Okay, but give me the memory card so I can upload them tonight." 

He clutches the camera away from you, offended. "No way. These need to be processed with my vision in mind. I'll give them to you Monday on a flash drive." 

"I have to wait that long?" you complain. "You realize I have to keep up with daily posting, right?"

"I'm sure you can find something in your thousands of selfies to choose from," he counters, already putting the camera away into his—it's a fucking leather satchel. He surveys the empty glasses and plates littered across the table. "It's already way past midnight. You drank away your chance to post today, cupcake. We done here?" 

"Fine," you say, unwilling to end the night when you're still this drunk. "But you're coming back up to the apartment." 

He brightens. "Can we watch a movie?" 

  
Getting up the steps of your apartment building is the most difficult task of your life and he opts to just watch you and laugh instead of helping. You collapse on the couch the minute he gets your front door unlocked. You're hoping he forgot your earlier exclamation and lets you pick the movie, but you're not that lucky. He puts on his favorite _film_ , and you break open the bag of salt and vinegar chips, kicking the towel that reeks of Axe off your couch and kicking off your heels at the same time, groaning as the room spins. He walks over to your fridge and tosses the drinks from 7-11 that had gone warm in the car inside. 

"Fuck," you whine. "I'm going to fall asleep watching this."

"Wow, are you really going to be that rude to a guest? I seem to recall that you promised you'd watch it." 

"I didn't promise shit, I just said I could get drunk enough to tolerate this," you protest. "And it just so happened to coincide with the amount of drunk it takes to get me to pass out." 

"Pay attention, the opening scene's about to start. I'm gonna pee." 

You're watching the TV with half awake, drunk glazed eyes while he goes to use the restroom. Someone on the screen is about to get murdered. Honestly, there's no fucking way you're gonna remember this film in the morning. You can't even tell what's been going on for the last ten minutes while this pervert made himself comfortable in your home. You hear the toilet flush, sink run, then bathroom door open and he slowly walks—or maybe just completely normally walks, you're too drunk to tell—back to where you are on the couch. Or stops right behind it? 

You let your head loll back and look up at him quizzically, upside down and glancing past where one hand is buried in his jacket pocket, and the other channeling that nervous energy, forefinger tapping, his thumb hooked in a belt loop. He sort of inspects you. You self consciously wipe your mouth with the back of a hand to make sure no salt and vinegar crumbs are on your face. He walks around the couch to stand in front of you again. You're too lazy to lift your spinning head up so instead track his movements with heavy eyes. 

"I've been thinking," he starts, and you nod with a little more enthusiasm than you are awake. He's blocking the movie, which is wonderful, because now you have a great excuse for not paying attention to it. "It's just... super strange." 

"What is?" you murmur. He smiles, a quirk just short of a smirk, and leans over you, placing one hand on either side of your shoulders on the back of the couch, resting his weight on it, caging you in. 

"It's strange," and he cuts himself off with a little laugh here, "maybe a little funny, that we've spent all this fun, dare I say even _romantic_ time together on something that I explicitly called a date and... you haven't once mentioned the fact that you have a boyfriend." 

_Boyfriend?_ Your brain churns a slow way through thoughts, then fills in its own blank. Matthew. That guy. And Furby. Who is hopefully dead by now. "Oh," you say stupidly, eyes dully fixed on him, still relaxed all the way back, neck exposed. You try to read his face—he looks smug, he looks like the cat got the canary. He's hovering over you like it's a challenge but you don't think he's actually mad. Maybe he's _into_ the fact that you're dating someone, is he a cuck? A serial cheater? Up until this point, you kind of brushed off his weird, condescending and flirtatious way of conversing as a tragic personality defect, but this interaction feels personal. 

So you shift yourself around out of the boneless comfort zone, pull one knee up, adjust the hem of your inconvenient dress as it slips a little dangerously, cracking your neck to try and wake up. "Yeah, alright. So you really are trying to get with me. I get it." 

"I'm just trying to figure out what your deal is, princess." 

You smile pleasantly and don't buy it for a second. "I like attention. You're giving me a lot of it. You bargained your way into a date. You asked me questions all night." 

"And I learned that you probably have no friends and don't talk to your family. Bu-ut, at no point did I learn that you have a boyfriend." 

He's really hung up on insinuating you're a liar and leading him on. Pot, kettle, black. You scowl, sit up abruptly, craning your neck forward all sharp, cocking your head. He straightens so your skull doesn't slam into his chin, hands returning to his sides. 

"Well at least now I know you _did_ look at my Instagram, Mr. Anti-Social Network," you say, thinking of all the photos of you with Matthew on there. "God, is this normally how you deal with being friendzoned? You look like the kind of guy who should be used to it." 

"Am I being friendzoned, though? Hiding the boyfriend and inviting me over after the drinks? Could lead to something really fucked up."

So he is into it. And into pretending he's not into it. You giggle, grab the hem of his shirt playfully, knuckles grazing his stomach for the briefest of seconds, tugging. "No way, I just forgot about him for a bit."

He stiffens, lets you pull him half a step closer to the couch but doesn't move his hands, which are now clenched. "God, do you actually think I'm going to ask you to stay?" you wonder with lightheaded amusement. Some small part of your brain is ringing a warning bell, that you're doing something you shouldn't, but alcohol twists it into a pretty little buzzing song instead. Your voice drops lower. "Do you want me to?" 

He's frozen now, eyes boring holes into your skull. You don't mind, you shift so you can sit up on your knees on the cushions, your hands twisting and climbing up his shirt because drunkenness isn't benefiting you here balance-wise. You slot your face close to his ear, almost brushing it with the tip of your nose. Traces of the horrible body spray are still there over the smell of leather and whatever else composes his scent, so you inform him on an exhale: "What _I_ want is to sleep. Please get the fuck out of my apartment." 

It takes a few seconds of heavy silence, but he finally starts laughing, stifling it into a sort of fucked up giggle, shaking his head as you release his clothing to slouch over again. Being upright is too difficult with the room spinning. "I can't believe this," he's saying. "This is why I don't normally do this with people I obviously know. But I guess I have the time." 

Settling back down on the couch, you watch suspiciously as that dark hair gets absently brushed away from his eyes before he cheerfully snags the leather bag containing his camera from a chair. He jams his hands into his jacket pockets and looks you up and down one more time. The feeling that you maybe did something very uncool is starting to sneak up on you. You have no idea what this reaction is or where the two of you stand. "I'll guess I'll have to catch you next time, cupcake." 

"Good," you say. "I'm not finishing this movie, by the way." 

"I'll put it on again next time," he calls over his shoulder, already heading out the door. "Bye!" 

You put your fingertips to your lips as if to blow a kiss, but instead flip him off. The door clicks shut, you don't even know if he saw. The movie is still going, someone is getting stabbed to death. You yawn.

The next morning you drag yourself off the couch (which you fell asleep on) into the bathroom only to find you're completely out of Advil for the hangover. You lament not stealing any of the dozens of spilled capsules from his glove compartment last night. You think about the writing and notes you saw in that one notebook. You think about the photos of a stranger eating dinner taken from outside their home. You think about how he develops his own photos, the fucking nerd. You stop thinking. Your head hurts. After at least thirty minutes of mental turmoil, you sigh, get your shit together, hide the pounding pain with oversized sunglasses and sweatpants, and go out. That fucker left your apartment door unlocked when he left and you hate it. 

In addition to the meds, while musing on the night before, you get a disposable camera from the drugstore. Later that afternoon, after hours of hangover napping off and on to Friends reruns on TV, arranging outfits, doing makeup, and general scheming, you take a bunch of selfies with the thing. It feels like ancient technology and you waste most of the film trying to get angles right, still unsure if they'll come out okay, ears ringing from the sound of your thumb winding up the film over and over. The photoshoot starts out legit, you had some really nice new stuff to show off from a previous shopping trip, all crop tops and pleather leggings. You love the vintage look and know anything with a washed out flash is a vibe. Those are going on your social media. 

But for the last six photos left on the roll, you climb into bed, the bathtub, drop to your knees in front of the long wall mirror... and take a few nudes. Just for fun. You have no idea how they're going to turn out. It's fucking exhilarating. If you look like shit, if you blinked, cut a nipple out of frame or something, you don't know and you're not going to know until much later. Somehow that's a hundred times more thrilling than just putting the timer on the phone camera, taking your bra off, and waiting for a poorly lit dick pic in return. 

On the next day of work you don't even ask for the photos from the dinner. You make a different move.

"So I'm guessing you have your own darkroom, right?" There's a plastic click as you place the disposable camera on his desk. 

He looks up from his laptop, eyes darting between you and the camera. "Yeah, I do." 

"So if I told you I took some pictures with this, would you develop them for me?" you say, inching the goods forward with a few flicks from a sharp fingernail. "I don't wanna go to the 1-Hour-Photo with these." 

"Sure," he says, curiosity plainly written on his face, flipping the colorful plastic camera over and over in his hands like he's trying to see through it, see inside. 

You smile, showing your teeth. "Thanks." 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 1) DBD lore: this bitch wears the cheapest cologne  
> me: AXE BODY SPRAY??
> 
> 2) fill in the blank on the favorite movie, the only prerequisite is that someone has to get stabbed to death in the first 15 minutes. so like scream
> 
> 3) the sexiest thing about this chapter is that he washes his hands after peeing


	3. overthink everything

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You get up, antsy, start wandering around the apartment, scanning for anything out of order. There's a logical explanation, like maybe he used the opportunity to steal all your Chanel bags out of the closet. But no, they’re all there, neatly organized. Even after going through drawers and cabinets, you can’t identify anything noticeably changed about the space where you live, and you're not even confident you'd know what to look for to find something amiss anyway. Just the towel that smells like Axe that you still haven't washed yet, sitting in a pile of laundry on the floor.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> scrappy doo has been found dead in miami

Nothing is going your way. 

Matthew calls you at 2AM on a Wednesday to cry about some development with Furby. At first you couldn’t tell if he was absolutely bawling his eyes out because it was dead or alive, but as the conversation progressed you began to understand the worst: the cat was totally fine. Furby eventually just wandered up to the front door on his own, meowing like he never left. You can't help but think, fuming, that he only came back because you hadn't been by for some time. 

As you hang up the call you pull a Vitamin Water out of the fridge and glance at the invitation, pinned by a magnet, for Upsilon Theta Omicron's upcoming Halloween party. On the bright side, if Furby had actually died, Matthew likely would have cancelled on attending the event, which could have been socially devastating for you. The idea of being alone at the party and telling mutual friends that your boyfriend needed time to mourn his dead cat is... almost too embarrassing to imagine. 

To top everything off, after bullshitting the gastropub review, the Gazette has had no work scheduled for you. You have nothing to write about, no free alcohol to take advantage of, and no reason to hunt down Olsen in person to get the photographs that are now days late. You don't even know if they're worth seeing, they could be awful, he could have no intention of showing them to you period, and the whole thing was just a setup for him to string you along for a dinner date-turned-bizarre interrogation. Maybe he lost interest when he found out about Matthew. Maybe he's a fucking incel. Maybe he developed the photos and just laughed at your body, showed them to his friends, and threw them in the trash. Every minute that passes without answers, without him reaching out to you about it... it all seems to make that appear more and more likely. And you didn't take any backup pictures on your phone.

You hang onto the fact that he looked very interested in the disposable camera like it’s a fishing hook in your cheek.

Worse than social paranoia is professional. What’s got you the most on edge is the idea of your review totally flopping because you have literally nothing to promote it with after trusting some fucking guy with your image. And if it amounts to less views than his movie review for _Gravity_ that went out a few weeks ago, you're going to find out where he lives and start a gas leak in the building. 

So you have to do the unthinkable: text him first. 

You already know how this looks. The whole thing is horribly identical to a period of awkward radio silence after a first date and then anxiously messaging the guy to see if he’s still interested. Texting first might be terrible, but it’s also not the worst thing. You just have to be as neutral and disinterested as possible. Not desperate at all. 

It takes four different drafts to figure out what to say in a message that’s going to be less than two sentences. But you can’t get past the feeling that just saying “hey” or “hi” is already too inviting, somehow revealing how much you’ve been chewing the backs off pens and straws and gum until everything tastes like ash. So you just give up. 

_When can i get those pictures_ is all you send. 

You put the phone down on your desk beside your bed, not two seconds later it’s vibrating all over the tabletop. 

It’s him, of course. 

“...Hello?” you answer, confused. 

“Hey princess, what’s up?” he sounds like he’s outside, there’s the faint white noise of wind in the background. 

“Did you read my text?” you say suspiciously. The immediacy of the call means you already know the answer. 

“Nah,” he says. “Just saw the notification and thought I’d call you instead.” 

You want to scream. Insane. This man is insane. Who just calls people instead of checking their texts if they're not driving? Why the fuck did you spend five minutes writing out a single question if he was just going to put you on the spot with a phone call anyway?

You inhale and exhale very evenly. “Just wondering when I can get those photos.” No mention of previous weirdness. No blushing bullshit. Easy.

There’s some shuffling around on the other end. “Which ones?” he asks pointedly. Your brain hones in on the hesitation as an admission of guilt. You should have known he’d be the type to agree to favors and never actually deliver, acutely hyperparanoid that it could be because he’s lost interest in you. The possibility that you're never going to get a reaction from him about the stupid nudes is harrowing. 

But he continues, “I can get you a flash drive of the dinner ones. Developing stuff is gonna have to wait until a few days after I’m back from Miami.” 

“You’re in Miami?” 

“Yeah, some dead guy’s out here. Been here for a few days since the news broke. Looked like it might’ve been the same as the Roseville murders.” He scoffs on the other end. He doesn’t sound like he’s happy to be there. “It’s definitely not, doesn’t fit the killer’s M.O. at all, but worth writing about.” He pauses. “I guess.”

“Cool,” you say, appeased enough by the excuse and ready to exit the convo as fast as possible. “So listen, when can I get the flash drive at least? The article’s coming out on Sunday.”

“Relax, I’ll be back in town on Saturday. We can meet at the office,” he says. “I’ll text you, doll.” 

“Okay.” 

You hang up without any other form of goodbye. 

On Saturday, you meet him at the office even though you have no other reason to be there. You’re a little earlier than expected and as you make your way inside, you see him and everyone else on staff that write about actual news shit are gathered around a TV in the conference room, speaking with hushed seriousness as some report runs. The shades are drawn in the glass windows that line every wall, you only briefly glance at them through the cracked door before making a beeline for his desk. 

You sit down in his seat and immediately begin snooping through everything. It’s pretty neat, only clutter reminiscent of his car. Rubber band ball, a series of sticky notes with phone numbers and notes about some story. His camera is plugged into the laptop at the desk and you reach out and jiggle the mouse to wake up the monitor. 

Bingo. You’re immediately greeted with a grid of all the photos he took from dinner. They look like they had just been processed for edits, Lightroom and Photoshop open and minimized. There’s a flash drive already waiting in a USB slot, you check to confirm it’s empty before dragging all the pictures in the folder straight over. It takes a bit since they’re, predictably, huge files, but you pull out your MacBook and shove the stick in the side the moment it’s done. 

He returns as the rest of the office breaks from their meeting, workspace suddenly filling with lively conversation as you’re unplugging the drive, files successfully transferred. He shakes his head upon seeing you, making his way over. “Helping yourself, huh?” 

You close your laptop with a click. “Yup,” you reply, eyeing him. 

“Going through my shit?” he accuses lightly, smirking. You roll your eyes. 

“You’re not that interesting. Just getting what I came here for, I’m in a hurry. When can I get the film pics?” 

He takes a seat on his desk, arms crossed, glancing at his screen before fixating on you. 

“Gonna try to develop them tomorrow. Not sure if you noticed, but there’s been some shit going down here,” he says, chin jerking towards the now-empty conference room. “And you don’t pay me.” 

You glance in the same direction, frowning, but are intercepted as Weather Boy, desk planted perfectly in your line of sight, uses this opportune moment to interject with greetings. “This is great!” he says, arms ping ponging in an inclusive, excited gesture between the three of you. “You coming to the bar tonight? Jed’s in!” Someone behind him whoops with masculine approval of the mention of drinking. If namedropping Olsen is supposed to encourage you, it fails spectacularly. You grimace, but quickly turn it into an apologetic smile. 

“Sorry.” You easily conjure a lie and stand up. “I’ve got a paper to write.” 

Olsen snorts beside you. “Give it up, she’s never coming out with us.” 

“Yeah, yeah, just because you two are all weirdly buddy-buddy now doesn’t mean I can’t invite her.” 

“Well, gotta go,” you say quickly, tucking your laptop under one arm. It’s difficult not to see Olsen’s shit-eating grin out of the corner of your eye, clenching your own jaw as you walk away. The direction their conversation will head after that implication is obvious, and you need to leave before your brain melts out of your ears.

When you get home you start digging through the files and send the good ones to your phone, already mentally mapping out a schedule. There's only a day to tease the article, then you have to change your link in bio and post incessantly about it for the next few days. You're tapping through each picture one at time, moving the best into separate folders, when you come across the one taken last, where you're glaring through the camera at him, poise dropped. It's processed, color graded and edited just as neatly as the others. 

You would never admit this to anyone, especially not the slimy photographer himself, but you kind of... love it. You can acknowledge it's one of the most honest pictures of you that there is, and despite the pinched nose, narrowed eyes... you do look good. The expression on your face is not unlike the first photo he took. Annoyed, still cute, if not a little feral. So whatever. In fact, it's just proof that you look good all the time, even while truly annoyed and drunk out of your mind. You tap to the next image, expecting to go to the very beginning of the album. 

Instead, there’s an extra photo in the drive that shouldn’t be there. It's from the same set he took during the night out, but in it you’re asleep on the couch, completely conked out, still in makeup, fully relaxed. So it’s obviously a candid. And candid pictures are already like running through a minefield of unflattering angles... but it's not an ugly photo either—which, in itself, is maybe more unsettling. Because you don't remember a moment where he _could_ have taken it.

Despite the alcohol, you acutely remember seeing him leave, and the next day you were pissed to find the door unlocked. Which means he had left the door unlocked and... what, came back to take it after you had passed out? Then left it unlocked again? Definitely went back into your apartment without you knowing? You consider he could have forgotten something like his keys and came back, saw you were already asleep, took the photo as a joke to harass you later. 

You stare until pixels in the Macbook screen feel like needles, trying to parse this. A joke picture would be ugly. This is a perplexingly nice, practically angelic photo of you dead asleep. It's also carefully edited just like the rest of the set, perfectly matched. 

So... what the fuck. You get up, antsy, start wandering around the apartment, scanning for anything out of order. There's a logical explanation, like maybe he used the opportunity to steal all your Chanel bags out of the closet. But no, they’re all there, neatly organized. Even after going through drawers and cabinets, you can’t identify anything noticeably changed about the space where you live, and you're not even confident you'd know what to look for to find something amiss anyway. Just the towel that smells like Axe that you still haven't washed yet, sitting in a pile of laundry on the floor. 

The article goes up the next day. The girls from your 500 level literature classes that are always asking for advice about gaining followers are commenting strings of emojis as usual. The movie review for _Gravity_ is becoming old news as you refresh your own piece on the Gazette site over and over, inflating the page views. Page views that you obviously deserve.

But you still spend more time poring over the creepy photo than any of the others you've been uploading. The idea that this could be some secret you stumbled upon that he didn't mean to share is tantalizing. You need to dangle it in his face, make fun of him as soon as possible. 

You manage to get in one day of work to confront him about the photo in the break room. Like everything else this week, it does not go your way at all. 

"Aww, did that one slip into the album set? I realized I forgot to lock your door, came back, and you just looked so cute," Olsen says, smirking like crazy, shoving a chipped mug that reads "ROSEVILLE LITTLE LEAGUE CHAMPION" in Comic Sans under the gurgling Keurig. 

You stare at him with your mouth slightly open. "Right. So you were just saving it to jack off to?" 

He snorts. 

"You do realize I'm just good at what I do, right? Especially when I see something compositionally good, can't waste the opportunity. That's the only time you haven't looked like a bitch, had to immortalize it," he says reasonably, one hundred percent casual. 

"You still didn't lock the door after," you reply flatly. 

"Did I not? Weird, must have forgotten." 

"Sure," you say, then can't help but be a little bit greedy, unsatisfied by how easily he's playing this off. You spent days torturously wondering what the hell was going on with him and were rewarded with the strangest, juiciest little piece of evidence, brimming with implication. And now he’s just downplaying it. The fuck? 

More importantly, you’re also curious to know if he's been taking any more Instagram worthy material while you weren't paying attention. So you smile, sweet and flirtatious. "Any other good candid pictures of me I should know about?" 

He waggles both of his eyebrows at you over the mug, slurping loudly. "Only hundreds, maybe thousands," he says earnestly.

You drop the charade immediately, back to being impatient and unwilling to stomach bullshit. "Uh-huh. What about the disposable camera photos?” 

"Doing those soon," he replies.

"You said you'd finish them—" 

"Work's busy," he says, sliding past you towards the door, tossing a dismissive wave with his free hand. As he turns the corner you hear him laugh once, call back in an ugly, mock-feminine voice: " _Kim, there's people that are dying._ " 

The following Thursday is the Halloween party. You spend the whole week buttering up Matthew, posting pictures of you two getting dinner every other night until it's finally time to put on the costumes. 

And wow, do the costumes look good. The puffy satin black maid dress is lined with enough tulle to lift the skirt and expose your perfect black thong and garters. Matthew, dressed up as a butler to match (though he's jacked enough that you think he would've made a better pool boy), is wearing a suit made for strippers that he plans to rip off in a flourish at some point in the night to expose some extremely short shorts. You don't condone this but are looking forward to being charmingly shocked by it later in front of others. 

A cat-eared headband made of wire, embellished with rhinestones, completes your look. For some reason everyone has been wearing these. Plus it’s Halloween, so if you’re gonna be a slut, might as well make sure it’s a fashionable one. 

You’re also the chauffeur and designated driver of the night, but all that means is Matthew's gonna have to wait on you to sober up before either of you get to go home. 

The vibration of bass announces the party before the two of you even round the corner to approach it. The streets being full of drunk college students in various costumes and states of undress forces you to park in an alley a few blocks away from UTO’s house, lined up neatly in a row of three other fraternities, the actual Greek letters “ΥΘΟ” displayed proudly over the door. To you, it just looks like it says “yoo”. You never fail to read it like a drunk frat boy is greeting you in your head, every time. 

UTO’s house is the smallest on the block, though boasts the largest lot size. In all of Roseville, there is possibly no better place for a Halloween Party to be held, and no worse place for a frat party to be held. The building is ancient, practically Victorian, or craftsman, or whatever the fuck, you don’t know anything about architecture. You do know with near certainty it’s never been renovated once, despite the rusty pipes always threatening to burst from what you can only assume is an overwhelming amount of puke and shit and condoms being shoveled into the chain-handled toilets every Friday night. In the style of that era, or maybe because the house was built by a crazy person, the interior is carved into creepily tiny rooms that usually double as hallways. It would be pretty insulting if the place wasn’t haunted. 

As a result, you already know most people are going to be freezing their tits off in the backyard by the end of the night, but there’s no way in hell you’re putting on a jacket and ruining an incredible look, so you’ll just have to suffer. 

Matthew smiles and gives you his arm, a perfect gentleman, and you enter together, senses enveloped by the smell of spilled warm beer, then instantly deafened by a trap remix of _Thriller_. You lose him almost immediately to a conga line of bros and wander off to get drunk on your own, floating from group to group and acquaintance to acquaintance to collect greetings, gossip, take selfies, and harass littles into bringing you more margaritas. 

Midway through the night’s revelry, you catch a whiff of something familiar that pisses you off: Axe body spray. 

You excuse yourself from a group of girls with red cups (also decadently costumed in what is basically themed lingerie) and follow your nose, going up the stairs so you can survey everyone crowded in the living room over the banister. You don't really know how to identify what you’re looking for, since there are only about two dozen guys with stupid black cloaks and masks on like the one you saw in his car. Despite all logic, you have this uncanny, drunken sense that he’s here. 

After staring at the flow of human bodies in and out of the room for a handful of moments, nothing catches your eye. The song changes to another remix of top 100 bullshit, and you begin to feel weirder and weirder about the fact that you’re even looking. It’s possible you’re a little too drunk and this needs to be chalked up to some bizarre, paranoid wishful thinking—this is a frat party. The person you’re looking for isn’t even a student, probably hasn’t been one for a decade or maybe ever, and if he were here it would almost certainly not be a coincidence, because you only recently discovered he’s the type of person to take pictures of you without you knowing. 

You sigh and use the opportunity to look for the lesser-known bathroom on the third floor, ascending another flight of stairs and relieved to find it unoccupied. As you kick the door shut behind you, it slams into something that decidedly isn’t the frame, bounces back and creaks open. There’s a boot blocking it.

He slips inside easily, closes and locks the door with a click. 

You instantly know it’s _him_ , exactly as suspected, even if not by Axe stench, just by body language, the way he carries himself, all despite the mask you had seen days ago being totally transformed into a far worse image, bloody jagged eyes and mouth grinning instead of the gaping scream of fear you expected. And he’s wearing red, accented by more red in the form of horrible, cartoonishly splattered bloodstains. It is way too over the top. It's practically cosplay. You should have known he'd be this kind of nerd about Halloween. 

"Boo," he says, the hideous mask muffling the insufferable voice you’d now recognize anywhere, tipping to the side as he tilts his head to look at you. “Looking for me, princess?" 

“Wow,” you say, voice as flat as possible, but secretly glad your nose was right after all, because the last thing you need is to be hallucinating the scent of terrible deodorants. Hip resting on the edge of the countertop, you turn on the water in the sink. “You really go all out for Halloween, huh? Let me guess: you’re...” You fish around for something so incorrect you think he’ll believe it, coming from you. “The Joker?” 

He laughs loudly, but without being able to see his face, you can’t quite tell if it’s at your expense or not. “Do I look like a clown? Actually, don't answer that. And hang on, need to clean something up.” He takes two springy steps over to the washbasin beside you and pulls the rubbery black costume gloves off, dunking them under the faucet. Red blooms over the already yellowed and stained porcelain, gets carried down the drain in a swirl. “There’s at least fifty Jokers downstairs,” he adds, and you raise your eyebrows, gaze switching between looking at his hands rinsing the gloves and the black slits of his mask, which he doesn’t bother removing. “And some of them are even wearing the actual costume. Besides, what are you supposed to be? Apron cat slut?” 

“Yeah. Because Party City was sold out of apron dog slut,” you shoot back cooly, deadpan. 

He snorts. You roll your eyes and hoist yourself onto the counter, finally taking weight off the Louboutins that have been shaving the skin off your heels through the fishnets all night. You have a million questions, but you’re biting your loose, drunk tongue, unsure of where to start when the last thing in the world that you want is to appear interested in him. Even though you are. At this point you'll welcome any reprieve from having to smile along to bro talk. 

Finished, he shakes water off the gloves and his hands with energy, reaching for a half-used roll of paper towels that are standing in for real towels. “You missed a spot,” you say, inspecting him.

“Where?” he asks, pausing, but you just wave a hand up and down to indicate his entire figure. 

“Huh, of course. Wasn’t this bad before—shirtless Dracula down there’s been mixing all his drinks with fake blood to stay in character, and I was the unlucky guy in the splash zone.” He makes a gesture that mimics an explosion with one hand. 

"Please. You don't need to make up an excuse," you say, shrugging. He freezes. 

"Yeah? Why?" 

"Because your costume would've looked just as ridiculous without red corn syrup all over it." 

He's slow to react, probably drunk too, or just stupid. He bursts out laughing, a beat too late. "Wow, if I felt like taking this off, I'd be wiping tears from my eyes," he's saying, making the motion of rubbing under his eyes over the mask anyway. You're beginning to catch onto the fact that whenever you roast him like this, it's consistently resulted in him being even more obnoxiously pleased with himself. 

“Why are you even here?” you ask, finally giving in to curiosity. He slouches against the sink, gesticulating loosely as he speaks, almost definitely drunk, because this is the most animated you’ve ever seen him, buzzing with something. 

“Why wouldn’t I be here? This is the only big Halloween party in town not hosted by some backwater trailer trash.” 

“There’s no fucking way you know someone in the house. You didn’t even go to this school.” You cross your arms.

“What, think I just wanna see you?” The creepy mask swivels towards your face now, the blank eyes, though unclear, feeling as if they’re locking with your own. You really hate that you can’t see his face. Your own expression twists distastefully.

“Do you?” you ask, skeptical, mind going straight to the strange photo again. 

He just laughs, glosses over the accusation completely, waving a hand. “Students aren't the only people here tonight, babe. At least a third of the people in this building just wandered in off the street. But I do know someone.” He slides the gloves back on with a rubbery snap and points at you with finger guns. “Our wonderful coworkers, one of which is currently pledging—” 

“Please don’t tell me it’s the National Weather doofus,” you groan. 

“Excuse you, he has a name—“

“Hey!” Someone starts pounding on the door and you flinch, startled out of the conversation. “You guys aren’t fucking in there, right? Can I please just use the bathroom? I need to pee and there’s a line,” a very drunk female voice complains. 

Before she's even done speaking, you jump off the counter and crowd the mirror over the sink, nudging him aside with one elbow and dampening your fingertips to wipe away any smudged mascara, flatten any loose hair. It absolutely cannot look like anything remotely close to a hookup was occurring. Unfortunately Olsen speaks before you can.

“Yeah, sooo busy fucking. Try the downstairs—“ he calls back through the door, half giggling, but you reach right past him to unlock it and march away, whipping past the drunk girl in the hall and descending the stairs dangerously quick for the height of the heels you're wearing, music volume increasing as you approach the first floor. You run right into Matthew at the bottom, he practically catches you. 

“Babe, where were you?” he shouts over all the noise. “I took my pants off already!” 

You look down, braced on his forearms, bewildered. He did, in fact, take his pants off already. “I had to pee,” you say loudly. You still have to, actually, because you had been interrupted by—you twist your head to look up the dimly lit stairs that are littered with people, but catch no glimpse of red. 

“Let me get you a drink!” Matthew bellows, pointing around his own red cup at you. “Wait right here!” Before you can stop him he’s already charging through a crowded doorway towards the kitchen, disappearing as quickly as you found him. You sigh, sit down on the steps beside a plastic Jack-O-Lantern. You’re at least grateful the party hasn’t been forced entirely into the backyard yet, enough people willingly out there playing beer pong to keep the inside just clear enough to breathe. 

You use the opportunity of a short break to post a couple of selfies, some mirror ones from before the party and some with the few friends attending who actually had good taste in costumes. Your existing buzz is tapering off and you quickly get engrossed in scrolling through other partygoers’ posts, commenting and liking. But you also begin to be jostled by throngs of people pushing by each other in a hurry to go up or down the stairs, and give up, get up to wander. Luckily you also catch the bottom floor bathroom open up just as a couple leaves it, surprisingly no line, but presumably only because it had been occupied without any hope of re-opening for an extensive amount of time. 

Then you go to the kitchen to hunt down Matthew, already mentally rehearsing a potential scene where you're yelling at him about how he keeps abandoning you. There’s a mountain of half-full bottles of every alcohol imaginable on every inch of counter space, and it takes some time to scan the room. You do a shot on your own, keep looking, but Matthew is nowhere to be found. It has to have been at least ten minutes at this point. You’re starting to get pissed off and dramatic screaming is queued to be the first point of attack. For the second point? You have options. A ride home in absolute silence could do the trick. 

Next to the fridge, a sliding glass to the patio is half open. You catch a glimpse of some of Matthew's friends there and slip inbetween throngs of bodies to reach it, wanting to at least check outside where the ice chests are. Right as you're about to exit, one hand pushing the door open that washes you in cool night air, someone else snags you by the elbow. You turn, relieved, about to dramatically say Matthew's name, but it's just Olsen again, back pressed up against the fridge, offering you a bottle of some unidentifiable beer. Costumes and clothes have all been pretty much abandoned by the rest of the guests, but he's still wearing the stupid mask, covered head to toe.

You glare at the gloved hand on your elbow and then the beer. "I'm not drinking that, it's fucking open. Who knows what you put in it." 

He shakes his head once, and it's just enough for you to assume he's rolling his eyes. "God, you're so dramatic. Just hold this so I can open you one," he says. "If you want it." 

You take the drink, still glaring, ready to head outside and ditch him. He grabs another one out of the fridge, cracks it open with a magnet-slash-bottle opener souvenir shaped like Mickey Mouse, then hands it to you, trading with the one already in your hand. Before you can speak again, he's clinking your bottles, holding his up in a cheers. 

"I'm heading out," he says. "See ya, instagirl." 

"Okay, thanks," you reply, begrudgingly neutral, since he somehow managed to do what Matthew failed to. "See you." 

As he turns away he shoves the mask up, tilting it just enough to expose his mouth and slight stubble, and takes a swig of the drink, slipping off between people. 

You watch him disappear, perplexed, until someone asks you to move out of the doorway, and take the opportunity to step outside and sip your own beer, actually enjoying the chance to breathe outside of the house's sweaty interior even though you're only going to be able to tolerate a few minutes of cold. Unfortunately the beer is fucking gross. You check the label—somehow you're not surprised that it's some kind of IPA. It's going on 2AM at this point, and you're about ready to call it. 

Sighing, you start doing the rounds between pop up tables covered in red cups, asking for any sign of Matthew, snarking along with some girls over their boyfriends, who are losing at pong by a landslide despite asking for cup rearrangements over and over again. The sound of the ping pong ball clicking against the tabletop begins to feel like a tiny hammer, and as someone harasses their girlfriend for a kiss for good luck, you hazily realize you're the only person in this group without their significant other. 

This has gotten so old. You head back inside and wander from room to room, ready to give up and just leave, when you fucking finally catch the back of Matthew’s head disappearing around a corner.

Shoving inbetween people, you follow his general direction and round the doorway, about to shout his name over the never ending thumping of bass, then full stop. 

Matthew is being pulled away towards the stairs by a girl in a black tutu and leotard with makeup caked from browline to eyelid. On the edge of the first steps, you watch him catch up to her, press her against the banister, and they kiss. It’s drunken and sloppy, but you also get a read of something like familiarity in it from his body language, body language only recognized from being on the receiving end of it. Before you can process what it all means you’re already confident that it’s not just some drunken hookup, that they already know each other, and that they're already gone, unaware of you standing there motionless, happily away upstairs to fuck or whatever. 

Ice cold, you turn around and walk straight back into the kitchen like a zombie. You knock one or two empty red cups over to brace palms on the damp counter. Then, robotically, you knock a few more over in an effort to find something that isn’t empty, settling on a bottle of Jack with just a little left at the bottom, tossing it back and finally, finally, as the relieving burn goes out your nose, it also turns the ice into your veins into pure seething rage. 

Ten thousand things run through your head at the same time, but the most important is to leave. The bass of a _Wrecking Ball_ remix playing for the twelfth time that night isn't even loud enough to cover the heartbeat in your ears. Everything is boiling to overwhelm a sort of shame and fear that wants to rise up side by side with paranoia, the thought that everyone knew except you, that you've been the only one dancing to the tune of staying partnered with someone you never even really fucking liked who is evidently far less enthralled by you than previously believed. 

You feel fucking hideous. You know you're not. But someone could see you feeling like you are, and that's almost as bad. You dig around for another bottle of anything, toss it back like the Jack, and gather yourself. 

You press past strangers to walk out the front door into the cold night air. Under the single porch light you kick off your shoes and pick them up, then pick a sharp strand of fishnet out of the raw, bleeding skin on your heels, breaking it into a hole in the hoisery to avoid more chafe. 

There's quite a few other partygoers heading home now, some in throngs unwilling to separate yet, chattering raucously, others waiting in their idling cars to make out or sober up. You pass parked, humming cars one at a time on the sidewalk, miniature boxes of bass and music their own fragments of the party you're leaving. After a block or so you veer between houses into the alleyway leading to your car, trying to avoid treading on as many fallen palm tree seeds and detritus as possible, stepping around them while some dig painfully into your feet. 

You need a plan. You're absolutely leaving Matthew there, but you're too drunk to drive, so you'll sit for an hour, probably, planning ways to hurt him and charging your dying phone. You think it's probably safe enough to move the car a few blocks away, though, to make absolutely sure if he comes out in the next hour he doesn't find you. As you pass by garbage cans and garage doors, you pause, coming up on your car. But it's not just your car now.

“Great,” you say out loud, staring at black combat boots dangling out of the backseat door of another familiar vehicle, feet planted flat in the gravely alleyway. “It’s you again.”

He sits up abruptly at the sound of your voice, about to stand. Through the orange glow of the street light you briefly see his silhouette eclipse the rear window before hearing his head slam into the ceiling, shaking the car momentarily. It’s almost enough to make you laugh, but when he leans out of the door frame, staying seated, elbows and forearms resting over his knees, you also realize he’s still wearing the stupid mask. You groan. The level of committment... 

He waves. "I thought I recognized your car. Going home?" 

"Obviously," you say, trudging to a halt in front of him, placing your shoes on the back hood. "I thought you left."

"Sobering up," he offers.

"Did you park behind me on purpose?" you ask, point blank. 

"Maybe," he says, but his voice is even more insufferable in how casual it is.

You sigh, it's silent for a moment. He's tapping his foot over and over. Gears start churning in your head. 

“Hey, Olsen,” you say quietly. “Are you busy right now?” You rest an elbow on the door, the other on the roof of the car. He stills. 

“…Why?” he asks, clearly suspicious. 

“I dunno.” You shift, curl a strand of hair around one finger idly, smiling, but not overdoing it. Not this time. “Wanna have some fun?” 

"Uh-oh, sounds a little dangerous. You forget your boyfriend again?" he says, so amused, and it stings, you just move automatically. Your hand is on the top of the door frame now, gripping the rubber lining and the cold roof as you press one knee onto the upholstery, sliding against the outside of his thigh. You stop playing with your hair to grab his shoulder with the other hand and he immediately snatches your wrist, forcing you to stop pushing forward, but not pushing you away. Stalemated, you roll your eyes. 

"Yeah, well." You hate that you have to recount this to him but you also don't want to care about it at this point, greed dictating everything. "Just saw him with some bitch in a Black Swan costume or whatever—" 

"So you're exes now?" 

You frown, trying to pull your hand out of his grip. "So I get a free pass." 

He snorts. “Oh, so that’s how it works, huh—“

“It is,” you say icily, and begin to rest more of your weight on your knee, leaning forward, letting gravity do the work of shoving your tits, barely contained by the ruffly apron, towards his stupid ugly mask. “I have a free pass and you look like a good option right now. So I’m cashing it in.” 

He's shaking his head before you can finish. “Yeah, yeah, right. What if I don’t have, uh… enough change?” 

“This isn’t a cute little roleplay, Olsen,” you sigh, acutely aware again that you're choosing one of the worst people possible to do this with, but also feeling pretty superior about it. Sliding your other knee into the car, bracing on either side of his thighs, you continue, “Even if you’ve been fucking with me this whole time I know you still wanna _fuck_ me.” 

“Babe,” he says. “Darling. You want _everyone_ to want to fuck you. You’d probably drop dead if you thought they didn’t—” 

“And I’m not wrong,” you snap, poisonous, shoving against his shoulder again, finally ducking entirely into the car to plant one hand on his chest, pushing him back. This time he concedes the ground, resting on his elbows, and you know you’re winning, can practically taste it, all possible desire sprinting towards this chance to get even and actually get something you want. 

You reach behind your head and undo the bow of the apron, pull it away from your chest and pull the collar of the dress down with it, unlined black bra officially revealed. Suddenly being cold as fuck for the last twenty minutes was all worth it. Your nips are hard as hell and have to look fucking delicious, the fabric is practically transparent— 

He makes an unattractive noise, completely frozen. You grab at one of his arms, pull it out from supporting his weight, and he almost falls back completely before readjusting to the other elbow. You drag your hand down to his wrist and press his gloved palm against your boob, and it's like a spell breaking.

"Hhhooooly fuck," he says, voice muffled by the mask, and his fingers flex, like they're trying not to squeeze, but they do. It doesn't feel much like anything to you yet. You scowl and finally rest your weight on his legs completely, straddling him semi-awkwardly in the confined back seat. 

"Can you please take that thing off?" 

"Hmmm," he says, then hooks one arm firmly around your waist and really starts feeling up your chest with the other, sudden boldness not quite lining up with all the weird hesitation there had been previously. "Let me think about it." 

You glare at the black eyes of the mask, trying not to shudder when he brushes against your—yep, painfully sensitive nipple. But when you reach down and go for his pants he immediately abandons ship like a startled animal.

"Whoa, whoa, whoa. Look, princess, you're drunk, I'm mostly not drunk. Can I get a raincheck on this? I don't wanna, you know, take _advantage_ of you, since you seem to be a horny drunk—"

Your rage level instantly spikes to red. "Are you fucking serious?"

"—plus you're clearly in an emotionally compromised position here—" 

"You motherfucker—" 

"Listen, babe, it's not you, it's me. Want me to tell you that you're very sexy and all that stuff? Will that help?"

You raise one hand in a fist over him, dead silent, not particularly threatening since you can't get a good wind up with the ceiling in the way, but completely ready to put full force behind landing it anywhere on his body. Probably his throat.

"C'mon! Let's make a truce!" He flattens all the way back, hands sliding off you, red hood falling as he twists to reach for his bag, which was squeezed into the foot space on the floor behind the passenger seat. He digs around and pulls out an envelope, offering it.

"See? As promised."

You take the envelope and flip it open while he jostles the both of you, trying to sit up again.

It's full of the photos you took on the disposable. You immediately get off him, shimmying backwards out of the car, standing up to hold them to see in the street light, shuffling through each photograph, instantly mesmerized by your own image. You tug your top back up as an afterthought, though still fixated on what feels like treasure. Most of them are pretty good, a few duds unfocused or washed out, but all of the nudes serve their purpose. Except, of course, for one detail. 

"There's one missing," you point out, flatly, as he sits up, gets out of the car also, kicks the door closed, pulling his hood back on over the fabric lining of the mask, adjusting it. 

"Yeah. I'm keeping it as a trade," he says, amused. "Since you got one of mine." 

You consider this. "Doesn't seem fair. Seems like you got two photos of me. And in one of them I'm fucking naked." 

"Huh," he says, places one hand on his chin, the other under his elbow. The amount of pantomiming he's been doing since donning the stupid costume is verging on excessive. "Remind me, which of us is getting free social media fodder?" 

"Eat shit, Olsen," you reply, grabbing your shoes off his car and stalking away to your own. 

He just laughs behind you, as usual. You're so thankful that it's past midnight and officially Friday. This shit week couldn't end any sooner. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> danny: *trips* oh god *hundreds of pictures of reader character fall out of his pockets* oh no *bends over to pick them up and more fall out* this is so embarrassing
> 
> hi! i’m back. i actually haven’t been gone, but it’s been a while because i have a very specific problem: i do not write chronologically. so expect more! it’s already written! i just have to build some bridges! 
> 
> 1) i don't know how fraternities work don't ask me what the fuck is going on there  
> 2) girl.... you in DANGER  
> 3) writing about parties while in week 48 of self quarantining is very devastating for me, a bro. thoughts and prayers appreciated


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